ATM monitoring systems are typically failure-based. Such monitoring systems dispatch a technician only when an ATM component experiences a hard-down failure—i.e. a failure that terminates operation of at least a portion of the ATM. Because the technician is dispatched only after a hard-down failure, there is a considerable amount of ATM downtime while the technician travels to, and attempts to fix, the failed component. This is not desirable at least because ATM downtime is a source of frustration and loss of confidence to ATM users.
Prior to a component's hard-down failure, the component may start to degrade. The component degradation may result in the component improperly performing a portion of executed tasks. For example, an ATM card reader may begin to degrade upon the lapse of a time period and/or after a large number of usages. This degradation may result, for example, in the card reader failing to capture card information for one out of every fifty card swipes.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide systems and methods that identify component degradation and initiate servicing of the degraded component prior to the component's hard-down failure. This is desirable at least because fixing the component prior to a failure will reduce at least a portion of total ATM downtime and increase customer satisfaction.
For some ATM components, normal performance may include a percentage of improperly performed tasks. For these components, component degradation may result in the component performing a percentage of component faults greater than a percentage of component faults expected during normal performance. For example, an ATM note acceptor may typically reject 3% of input notes. A degraded note acceptor may reject more than 3% of input notes.
Thus, it would be further desirable to provide systems and methods that utilize a rate of occurrence of component faults to identify and remedy a degraded component prior to a hard-down failure.